Category Archives: restoration

The reception extended to Mark Driscoll by Pastor Robert Morris is simply awesome and the warm ovation by the congregation is grace filled! What a remarkable gesture that speaks volumes of the leadership and the Church.

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“For the last twenty years thousands of men from across America struggling with sexual sin have come to our intensive counseling workshop. Over half were pastors and missionaries.

I wish our experience was unique.

Several years ago a seminary professor told me: “We no longer ask our entering students if they are struggling with pornography, we assume every student is struggling. The question we ask: ‘How serious is the struggle?’”

One missions agency told me that 80% of their applicants voluntarily indicate a struggle with pornography, resulting in staff shortages on the field.

Pornography is just one level of sin, a form of visual sex, or heart adultery. Physical adultery includes an affair, multiple affairs, prostitution, and homosexuality. Other sexual behaviors within the ministry are such heinous “unfruitful works of darkness . . . it is shameful even to speak of the things that they do in secret” (Ephesians 5:11–12).

To face the crisis we must correctly understand the nature of the problem, ask God to search our own hearts, and be committed to restore each one caught in sexual sin “in a spirit of gentleness” (Galatians 6:1).”

I was raised in a home by God-fearing parents. Even before their conversion later in life, they imparted a deep love for the Jews and the land of Israel.

My love for Israel flowed deeper after Christ conquered my life through the gospels regenerating power. He has allowed me the joy of traversing the land of Israel on two separate occasions and even now I anticipate a third trip for ministry in the near future.

With that background, you can see why I sincerely appreciate John Pipers relational communication to David Brickner, executive director of Jews for Jesus, concerning Israel’s future and the promised land.

This is a good read!

Dear David,

Thank you for taking this happy initiative. I am eager to discuss Israel and the Promised Land with you. I love Jews for Jesus. Your leadership, and Moishe Rosen’s before you, have been for me a cause for continual thanksgiving. “To the Jew first, and also to the Greek” (Rom. 1:16) has never ceased to carry weight with me. I pray we will never lose Paul’s passion in Romans 10:1: “My heart’s desire and prayer to God for them is that they may be saved.”

We both agree that the way God chose to bring all the nations under the sway of King Jesus is astonishing. After sketching it, Paul praised God, “How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways!” (Rom. 11:33).

First, God chose Israel. “The Lord your God has chosen you to be a people for his treasured possession, out of all the peoples who are on the face of the earth” (Deut. 7:6).

Then, for 2,000 years, he focused his saving work mainly on Israel, “allowing all the nations to walk in their own ways” (Acts 14:16).

Then he sent Jesus, the Messiah, to Israel, knowing they would crucify him, so that the Gentiles might “receive mercy because of their [Israel’s] disobedience” (Rom. 11:30).

And then, lest we Gentiles think we are the end of the story, Paul told us that Israel “has now been disobedient in order that by the mercy shown to you [Gentiles] they [Israel] also may now receive mercy” (Rom. 11:31).

And the point of it all? To show that “from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever. Amen” (Rom. 11:36).

What was Paul’s response to this flabbergasting way of saving the world? Unsearchable! Inscrutable! “Who has known the mind of the Lord, or who has been his counselor?” (Rom. 11:34).

So, you are right. I believe God has a future for ethnic Israel. And we agree this is not because there are two tracks to glory or two different covenants of grace. Rather, corporate Israel will be saved in the end because she will be grafted back into the same covenant tree with all of us wild olive branches (Rom. 11:16–24). Both Jews and Gentiles become heirs of the promise of Abraham in the same way: “If you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to promise” (Gal. 3:29).

So I am persuaded with J. C. Ryle that Israel, as a people, will someday be converted to the Messiah and saved:

They are kept separate that they may finally be saved, converted and restored to their own land. They are reserved and preserved, in order that God may show in them as on a platform, to angels and men, how greatly he hates sin, and yet how greatly he can forgive, and how greatly he can convert. Never will that be realized as it will in that day when “all Israel shall be saved.” (Are You Ready for the End of Time? pp. 137–138)

Moreover, I also believe the promise of the Land to this redeemed ethnic Israel is both conditional and irrevocable. Irrevocable means they will finally have it as a special dwelling place when the Deliverer comes from Zion and banishes ungodliness from Jacob (Rom. 11:26).

This Glorious Gospel of Penal Substitution is the grace based means of propitiation accomplished by a loving and righteous God! So disturbing is Gods effectual mercy in action, that men like Rob Bell are unable and unwilling to: Believe it! Embrace it! or Proclaim it!

Yet, Isaiah 53 screams “it is true!!!!!!” This powerful reality fueled the Apostle Paul with the courage to proclaim with certitude, “I am not ashamed of the gospel” and do so in the process of unpacking the wrath of God! [romans 1:16-18]

The clips in the following video are even more impacting by the worship song that enters into the narrative.

rgh

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My comments will certainly evoke the angst of those who rush to prop up corrupt ministers as if they are victims. These Corinthian type sympathizers boast with inordinate pride that they are under commandment not to be judgmental so they choose rather to lovingly restore back to ministry the” man of God” who has merely “fallen”.

They also advocate a false moral equivalence by arguing that we all deal with sin. Excuseeee me! If that is the core issue, why does God set authenticating standards for his ministers in 1 Timothy 3 and Titus 1. Such secualrized reasoning is intellectually Goooooofy!

However, In the name of [unprincipled] mercy, they reject God’s own vocabulary for pseudo ministers whom the Apostle Paul identified as corrupt “ministers of satan”.

Choosing ignorance sustained by denial, these compromised compassionates promote the very thing that God himself wars against.

Paul the Apostle said it like this in 2 Corinthians 11:11-15,”And I will keep on doing what I am doing in order to cut the ground from under those who want an opportunity to be considered equal with us…..

For such men are false apostles, deceitful workmen, masquerading as apostles of Christ. And no wonder, for Satan himself masquerades as an angel of light. It is not surprising, then, if his servants masquerade as servants of righteousness. Their end will be what their actions deserve.”

Now read this news report and you will see why I am ticked!

rgh

” Police say a pastor at an upstate New York church embezzled more than $400,000 from the credit union where he worked. Jason LaPierre, pastor at River Church in Kingsbury, is charged with writing himself hundreds of personal checks over four years while working at the Hudson River Community Credit Union in Corinth, 40 miles north of Albany.

LaPierre was a human resources and marketing executive at the bank. The thefts were discovered last year and he was fired in December. He was arraigned Wednesday on charges of grand larceny and falsifying business records. Phones for LaPierre and the church were out of service Thursday.”

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About Richard Hanner

The husband of Regina, the father of Amanda, the grandfather of Andrew, Anna and Aaron, a church planter who now has the honor of serving some of the Kingdom’s finest Christ Followers in LaGrange, Georgia. [more]

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